Sisters of Sorrow (13 page)

Anna splashed to the surface and grabbed onto a nub of stone on the wall. The echoes quieted. Donny dogpaddled toward her, holding the key over his head. Its light reflected off the water, sending shimmering ripples across the curved stone ceiling.

“You okay, Anna? You look kinda ruffled.”

“That was a damn stupid thing to do, Donald Lawson!” Anna sputtered, her head just barely above the water. “I thought you drowned.”

“I nearly did drowned. The light went out ‘fore I got to it. Took a while to find in the dark.” Donny looked past Anna to the broken iron rungs. “Guess we’re not going back up that way.”

Anna wanted to slap Donny, or continue yelling at him, but she couldn’t reach him without letting go of the rock, and she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Also, she didn’t want to consider what would have happened if he
hadn’t
retrieved the key. So she said nothing, turning away, instead, to the remains of the ladder.

The rungs below the water line, and the next three above it, had rusted away completely, leaving only orange stains in the rock wall. Rust had gnawed so deeply into the next two rungs that they surely could not have supported either Anna or Donny. Above these, a hole gaped in the stones where her rung, and the rocks surrounding it, had broken loose.

“We’re certainly
not
going back that way,” she said. “If we wanted to be up there, why’d we climb down in the first place?”

“I just mean I sure hope we can find that drainage pipe, else we’re gonna be stuck down here,” Donny said. “You sound kinda upset. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, Donny, I’m fine. Let’s just find the pipe, no more talking for a bit, okay?”

The flat wall that held the ladder extended away from her about ten feet in either direction, with no visible openings. The key’s glow did not penetrate into the darkness where the half-domed ceiling curved down to meet the water.

Anna pulled herself along the wall, rock by rock. Donny followed, swimming, holding the key aloft. The sounds of their progress fluttered around the confined space, returning to them as whispers and secretive movement.

At the corner where the flat wall met the curved dome, just above the water line, they found two openings. Red brick pipes with black-molded mortar, and greenish algae glazing their curved bottoms. Both pipes smelled like rainwater and old wood and wet stone, not like salt water or seaweed.

“Which one is it?” Donny whispered.

“Neither goes to the ocean. Look,” Anna pointed into one of the pipes, “it slants up, not down… maybe something else drains into here.”

“If it goes up, maybe we can get out faster that way.”

“When Joseph brought you here, do you remember which pipe he used?”

“No, I was in a tunnel, then I was up there in the basement,” Donny said. “I don’t remember this room at all.”

Anna looked around the cistern, marking their position in relation to the ladder. “The alcove, for the cistern, it was on the east wall of the basement, I think…”

“Right,” said Donny. “In the afternoon, the sunlight almost reached it.”

“Okay, so that means this wall, the one we climbed down, is the east side, so these pipes are running…”

“North and north-east,” Donny whispered, excitedly, then paused and added, “So, what does that mean?”

“It means, they go farther inland, away from the sea. The drainage pipe to the ocean should be on the opposite side.” Anna considered for a moment, then said, “I think we should go that way. These pipes, I don’t know, they could put us anywhere. It could take forever to find our way back to your sister. If we go to the ocean, we can just follow the beach around.”

Without further conversation, Anna pulled herself along the curved wall. Donny followed close behind her, forcing back the shadows with the glowing key. Slick black algae coated the rocks. Twice, Anna lost her grip and bobbed under the dark water. She wasn’t a great swimmer, and her clunky leather shoes didn’t help, but she managed to regain the surface and her hold on the wall without assistance from Donny. Donny, on the other hand, seemed to be half fish, able to swim along beside her while holding the key above his head. He was really starting to annoy her.

“This might be it,” Anna said as she reached the opposite corner. An iron grate, severely rusted, hung halfway open just above the waterline. It was round with vertical bars and a hinge on one side. Opposite the hinge, a clasp provided a means to lock the grate, though the lock was gone. The hinge appeared to be rusted in place, but when Anna squeezed herself between the grate and the wall, the grate swung open with a sickening screech.

Anna froze. The screech continued for what seemed like several minutes after the grate stopped moving.

“That’s the screaming I told you about,” Donny whispered. In the dim light, it was hard to be sure, but Anna thought he looked very pale. “I thought it was Joseph. He always showed up just after I heard that noise.”

“That means we’re going the right way,” Anna said. “If this is how he comes and goes, then it must lead out. Come on, this time, you’re going first.”

Donny scrambled out of the water and into the pipe, holding the key out in front of him. As he did, the cistern fell once again into complete darkness. Anna quickly followed. Donny’s body nearly filled the diameter of the pipe, and blocked out most of the light. All Anna could see was the silhouette of Donny’s backside, and the dim halo around it, as the key’s light reflected off the walls of the pipe. Under other circumstances, this would have been a funny sight.

A halo around his bottom, if Jane or Lizzy were here, I’m sure they’d have something to say about that.

But the girls were not here, and Anna needed to stay mad at Donny as long as possible. It was the only way not to be terrified. She decided his hallowed butt wasn’t funny at all.

At first, Donny hobbled forward like a three-legged dog. It was going to take forever to get through the tunnel that way. Anna handed him the leather thong that had held her finger. “Tie the key on that and sling it around your neck. It’ll free up your hand and keep you from dropping it.”

“I wasn’t the one who dropped it,” Donny said, but he did as she suggested.

When they had crawled another ten feet, Donny said, “It’s getting kinda hard to see. It’s all foggy up here.”

“Just keep going, Donny. The fog will clear once we get out.”

“‘Get out,’ yeah. That’ll be somethin’, huh? To be out in the fresh air again?” He started shuffling forward a little faster. “How far do you think it is?”

“Shh. Keep it down. I don’t know how far it is. Could be a really long way.”

“‘Cause I think I see light up ahead.”

Anna’s heart froze. “Donny!” she gasped in a harsh whisper. “Donny, stop! Cover the key!”

Donny did and the tunnel collapsed into blackness. “What’s wrong?” he whispered.

“It’s night out there.” She moved forward, as close to him as she could get, and tried to see around him. “There shouldn’t be any light ahead.”

Donny whispered, “I don’ see it no more.”

“Shh.” Anna strained her ears. The ubiquitous echoes flittered up and down the pipe. As the ghosts of their voices died away, a new noise emerged. From deep in the tunnel came the sound of wet, furtive, movement.

In a voice, so low it seemed to come from inside Anna’s head, Donny said, “It sounds like somebody’s moppin’ the floor down there.” He opened his hand just a little, releasing a thin shaft of light from the key.

Over Donny’s shoulder, deep in the mist-shrouded tunnel, Anna saw it. Eye shine.

“It’s Joseph,” she whispered.

The moment the words left her lips, the formerly secretive sloshing sounds amplified to a frenetic, sloppy splashing.

Donny scuttled backward into Anna so hard that he crammed himself between her and the pipe wall, wedging them in place. Anna tried to back up, but Donny’s frantic scrambling pinned her to the wall. She couldn’t tell him to wait for her to get out of his way, her own panic trapped the words in her throat.

Her hand ended up on the back of his thigh. So, she pinched, severely. Donny squealed in pain and terror. His hands slipped out from under him on the slimy algae, and he fell forward. Anna managed to scramble back before he got up and pinned her to the wall again.

Within a half a second, Donny was back up on all fours. He and Anna scampered and scuttled madly backward down the pipe as Joseph’s glowing eyes sloshed toward them. Anna felt the wet skin peeling off her knees, and twice slammed her head into the top of the pipe, but barely noticed either. The eyes racing toward them were her only concern.

Anna’s knees went over the end of the pipe before she realized she had reached it. The lower half of her body dropped. Her stomach hit the pipe’s edge, knocking the wind out of her. Momentum carried her the rest of the way out. The cistern’s black water pulled her under.

She struggled back to the surface, gasping for breath. Donny shot out of the pipe, splashing under the water beside her. Anna stared, wide eyed, at the gaping mouth of the pipe. Joseph was coming. She looked across the cistern toward the broken ladder, then to the other pipes. Darkness hid her escapes, but she already knew they were too far away.

Close the grate!
she thought, just as Donny bobbed up out of the water.

“The grate!” he yelled, already paddling back toward it.

Anna grabbed the bottom arc of its iron rim and flung it closed. The screech of its hinge reverberated through the cistern. Corroded iron slammed against stone with a loud, dead,
Clank!
Donny pulled himself half out of the water, fighting to pin the clasp.

“Hold it closed! He’s coming!” Donny yelled.

“There’s nothing to push against!” Anna yelled back. She held onto an iron bar with one hand, the hinge with the other, and sought somewhere to anchor her feet.

Donny held the clasp against its hook on the wall. “I’m going to tie it closed with the leather cord you gave me.”

As he reached for the key, a black tentacle shot through the grate and wrapped around Donny. It yanked him back, slamming him against the iron bars. He bleated a strangled, miserable yelp. The rusted bar Anna had been holding snapped off in her hand with the force of the impact. The tentacle crushed Donny against the grate, bending the bars inward.

A terrible, guttural churning filled the cistern. The noise became words, roaring and infuriated, “You’re supposed to be dead!”

Then the face appeared. A stark, terrifying image. From the nose up, a human skull, wrapped in a yellow parchment of skin. Luminous silver fish eyes, larger than Anna’s fists, protruded from its sockets. Below the eyes, starting where the nose hole should have been, the mouth of some horrible predatory fish. Row after row of twisted needle-sharp teeth.

“Anna!” Donny choked, reaching for her.

She was already swimming away, the voice in her head screaming at her to flee.
He can’t catch both of you. You have to get away. You can’t die like this, not after all you’ve been through! You don’t know Donny. You don’t owe him anything. Just go! GO!

“Anna!” Donny cried again.

She turned. The Joseph thing pushed its teeth through the iron bars until they scraped Donny’s ear.

“She won’t help you,” its horrible voice whispered. “She only cares about herself. Little Anna killed twelve holy nuns just so she wouldn’t have to make shoes anymore.”

Anna swam back toward Donny, the other Anna ranting in her head.
It’s a trap, he’s luring you back…

Shut UP!

As clear and as vivid as if she were real, Other Anna bobbed out of the water in front of Anna, blocking her path.
Get away, while you can,
the spectral Other Anna said in a menacing stern voice.
Do
not
go back for the boy!
Anna slammed the iron bar into Other Anna’s head and the vision splattered to dark water. She lunged toward Donny, grasping the grate’s hinge.

With its foremost teeth, the Joseph thing bit down on the top of Donny’s ear. Donny started to scream, but the patchwork hand reached through the bars and clamped over his mouth. The tentacle pinned Donny’s arms at his sides. He thrashed wildly with his feet, but could not break free.

“Little Anna drowned her own baby brother in a bathtub because he was a snotty little brat. She won’t help you.”

“He wasn’t a brat!” Anna screamed and plunged the iron bar through the tentacle. She ripped it out, preparing to strike again.

Joseph thrust his other hand through the grate, grabbing her wrist with crushing strength. It lifted her all the way out of the water. She dangled against the grate, staring into its dead empty eye.

“Why’d you come back, Anna?” it croaked at her. “You knew better, didn’t you?”

“You were supposed to be my friend,” she said, surprised by how betrayed she felt.

“Your friend?” the thing asked. “I’ve been back to the castle, little Anna. All of your friends are dying because of you. It’s so cold. So, so cold. And they have nothing to eat. I think being your friend is a very bad idea. What do
you
think, Donald?” The Joseph thing removed its hand from Donny’s mouth.

Donny gasped, “Anna, the key!”

Anna looked down. Her free hand hung within inches of the glowing key. She snatched it off its cord and jammed it through the bars, driving the enchanted relic into Joseph’s silver eye.

Lightning erupted inside the thing’s skull, flashing in one eye socket and out the other. Joseph screamed, releasing Anna’s wrist. She dropped into the water and sank.

As she thrashed below the surface, strong fingers wrapped around her wrist again and hoisted her upward. Anna reared back to strike again, but as she came out of the water, it was Donny who held her.

“Easy, there, Anna,” he said.

The Joseph-thing flailed and writhed in the pipe, screaming, wailing, sounding exactly like a six-year-old child throwing a temper tantrum.

“Quick,” Donny said, “give me that iron bar.”

Anna, dazed, offered it to him. Donny crammed the rusted bar through the clasp and the latch. The Joseph thing continued to scream, but had stopped crying. The pain was gone from his wailing, replaced by rage. A tentacle lashed out of the darkness, striking the grate. Two iron bars bent outward.

“C’mon, Anna!” Donny dragged her away across the cistern. Seconds later, Anna began swimming with him toward the far corner.

Donny splashed through the darkness toward the two pipes. Anna fought to keep up. She wasn’t able to hold the key above the surface as Donny had. It dipped in and out of the water as she swam. The cistern alternated between flashes of dim light and complete blackness. Darkness hid the walls.

Just as she was beginning to fear they were swimming in circles, Donny asked, “Which one?”

There was only a vague suggestion of Donny’s outline ahead of her. Beyond him, two black circles defined the openings of the pipes. The cistern was much darker than it had been. Behind them, Joseph slammed against the iron grate, screeching and roaring.

“Just pick one,” she said.

“Hold the key up so I can see.”

“I
am
holding it up,” Anna said.

“I think you broke it,” Donny whispered.

The part of the key that had penetrated Joseph’s eye no longer glowed. It was just dead black iron. The rest of the key flickered and blinked in spasms, dimming.

A metallic screech reverberated across the cistern, followed by a splash. Anna guessed that Joseph had torn off one of the bars and flung it at them.

“Get in the left tunnel,” she said. “Go!”

Donny scrambled out of the water. Anna tossed him the key and followed. This time, as they scampered through the tunnel, his butt had no halo. No light at all reached Anna.

They crawled frantically at first, but as time passed, the savage noises from the cistern died away. The sharpness of their terror gave way to fatigue and they slowed, plodding through the darkness. Anna lost track of time. She felt as if she had been crawling for days, or maybe it was weeks. She couldn’t be sure. By the time Donny found the end of the tunnel, they both trembled with exhaustion. Anna’s bleeding knees ached, her neck and shoulders burned. Her eyes felt hollowed out from staring so long into blackness.

“Where are we?” she whispered.

“I think it’s another cistern,” he said, “only this one’s empty…and it stinks.”

Donny fidgeted and squirmed at the mouth of the pipe, trying to get his feet around in front of himself. The narrowness of the pipe constrained him. After nearly wedging himself stuck crosswise, he gave up.

“I can’t turn around. Gonna have to go head first,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a very long drop…I hope not. Hold my feet.”

Anna felt around in the dark until she found his ankles. “I’ll try to hang on, but if you fall, I won’t be able to hold you.”

Donny didn’t reply, and Anna couldn’t see what he was doing. She felt him lie flat then inch forward. “I’m just gonna slide out, nice and slow.” Donny’s upper body dropped out of the way. The top of the pipe shimmered dimly, reflecting the key’s glow. Suddenly, Donny lurched forward. It felt as if something yanked him out of Anna’s grasp. She heard a thump and a muffled clatter. Then a groan.

“It’s a longer drop than I thought.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. It’s just my head,” he replied. “Ease yourself over the edge. I’ll try to catch you.”

Anna moved forward to the rim of the pipe. The key illuminated Donny, below her, but little of the space around him, just the stone wall below the pipe and a bit of dry floor. The top of Donny’s head, sporting a fresh abrasion from his fall, reached almost to the bottom of the pipe.

Anna lowered her belly to the floor and wriggled forward until her shoulders were clear of the opening. She reached down to Donny, who took hold of her under the arms and pulled her forward. She carefully eased herself out, trying to fall as softly as possible. Leaning heavily on Donny, she curled one leg out of the pipe, hoping to catch herself on it when she dropped.

It might have worked, except Donny, walking backward while looking up at her and supporting her weight, tripped over something in the gloom. He fell back with a wet
splat,
and she tumbled out on top of him. He grunted, the impact knocking the breath out of him. The reek that immediately followed took what was left of Anna’s breath away.

The stench of rot was so intense she could taste it. Donny tried to push her off, but his efforts seemed weak. Anna rolled to the side, her stomach clenching. If there had been any food in her, she would surely have vomited. Donny retched behind her. Anna staggered to her feet, grabbed Donny’s arm and dragged him away from the horrid smell.

When the room stopped spinning and her equilibrium returned, she saw what had tripped Donny. A fat, speckled harbor seal lay sprawled across the stone floor. Its head and one of its flippers were missing.

“Joseph do that?” Donny choked.

“It didn’t do that to itself,” Anna nodded.

Donny took her hand and pulled her away from the dead beast. They worked their way around the curved wall. The key had dimmed even more since they fled the flooded cistern. It now only illuminated a few feet on either side. At one point, they found a crack in the stones, running up the wall and as far as they could see across the floor.

“Explains why there’s no water here,” Donny muttered.

“If this
is
another cistern, there should be a house above us, right? Or at least a basement?”

“Hope so,” Donny said.

It scared Anna how tired he sounded. “Are you doing okay, Donny? Is your ear okay?”

“Yeah…” he said, trailing off. He took a few steps before adding, “I’m glad you came back for me.”

Anna felt herself blushing all over, and was glad for the deep gloom. The knowledge that she might not have gone back for Donny filled her with intense shame.

“Sorry I almost didn’t,” she said, squeezing his hand.

“Almost never accounts for nothin’,” Donny said.

Anna was still trying to figure out what that was supposed to mean when Donny said, “Hey! Here we go.”

He held the key close to the wall. Iron rungs set into the stones led up to…well, she couldn’t see where they led, but wherever they went,
It’s got to be better than here
.